Rental home network headaches - need some advice.

CaptainPathogenik · July 16, 2021

Howdy!

I am in desperate need of some help. I recently moved into a 3 story + basement home in Northern Virginia where I have access to Fios, Comcast, and some others I think. Our landlord told us that the house was already setup for comcast so we ran with that but now I'm second guessing it. I'm by no means an expert on this stuff and honestly, I just want to be able to play online games with friends and not have huge ping spikes. I am considering talking to my roommates and seeing if they're down to switch back to Verizon Fios since we are within our 30 day period on the contract, but I'm not even sure if that would fix our problems. The walls and layout in this house make it abysmal for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to get around and I've tried everything I can think of except just running some cat5 cable from the basement to the second floor and putting in a router or something there to see if that helps.

My problem is as such: Our access points are only in the basement of the house. We have two, one in the wall in the downstairs living area, and one in the mechanical room. In the mechanical room is a fairly old network switch but when I hooked it up, none of the ethernet plugs around the house would work. I tried having comcast send out a tech to see if any of the other coax outlets around the house worked but the only ones that they said would work were down in the basement.

Running a speedtest at various points in the house and I get download speeds of 400ish Mbps (in the room with the modem/router) 45 Mbps (first floor) 11 Mbps (second floor) and I didn't bother to test the third floor because nobody lives up there right now. I tested on both my phone and my laptop with basically the same results.

My potential next steps are:
1) go buy a router and 200ft of cat5 cable, then run that up the side of the house outside through a window on the second floor and install a new router there to spread signal.
2) Call Verizon Fios and switch our service to them while also having them send a technician who can help ensure everything is set up.
3) A wifi mesh system? I'm not sure on how well those actually work for a house like this where the walls eat signal and we don't have a way to connect them to hardwired setup via ethernet plugs.
4) Maybe try to figure out this old network switch and use that? The comcast guy said its old and I noticed that a lot of the lights don't light up when its plugged into the modem/router anyways but I'm not too sure what that actually means.

I'm sure there's a way to fix this as the previous tenants had a big gaming PC setup when we toured the house, but I don't have a way to ask them. Any tips or ideas you all have towards this would be great. If needed, I can provide pictures or more details. Also this is my first time posting on the LTT forums so if this is the wrong place for a post like this, lemme know where I should be posting and I'll gladly switch! Thanks!

VectorTech · July 16, 2021

4 minutes ago, CaptainPathogenik said:

-snip-

So there are plenty of really solid mesh home wifi systems (I'm a big fan of the OMADA system from TP-Link), you would need a couple AP's, as well as a POE switch and you be able to install a very capable home mesh system in just a few hours with the help of your roommates. Also if you find that the WIRED connection speed while gaming is insufficient then consider switching ISPs. However don't base that decision off of wireless performance because as you're more than likely aware that can be caused by the environment.

CWALD · July 16, 2021

If the reason your ethernet ports in the house didn't work is just a bad switch then I would try swapping it out, they are cheap and then you would have wired connections throughout the house. If the wire is also bad then you could potentially use it to pull through new cable as well and you would be set.

Another option would be to use powerline adapters. They allow you to extend your network through your electrical outlets, its not as good as dedicated wires but its better then Wi-Fi. Here is a link to Netgear's: https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-PowerLINE-Gigabit-Pass-Through-PLP1200-100PAS/dp/B00S6DBGIS/ref=asc_df_B00S6DBGIS/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=309833041189&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2443772909724619483&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9019795&hvtargid=pla-436375921916&psc=1